作者： Pales, Ashley R.; Kinsey, Erin N.; Li, Chunyan; Mu, Linlin; Bai, Lingyun; Clifford, Heather M.; Darnault, Christophe J. G.

摘要：Nanofluids are suspensions of nanometer-sized particles in any fluid base, where the nanoparticles affect the properties of that base. While they have been the subject of recent study regarding their use in heat and mass transfer applications, a fundamental analysis of nanofluids has yet to be undertaken. Here the authors sought to understand the fundamental mechanisms that govern the changes in the rheological properties of SiO2 nanoparticles in brine and brine-surfactant based nanofluids with nanoparticle concentration and temperature variations. SiO2 nanoparticle concentration, temperature, shear stress, and shear rate were used to characterize the rheological behavior of nanofluids. An analysis of the nanofluids, which were the subject of this study, specifically the control brine and brine-surfactant solutions without SiO2 nanoparticles, indicated non-Newtonian behaviors, particularly shear thickening and shear thinning behaviors. Shear thickening occurred at higher shear rates and shear thinning occurred at low shear rates. Finally, the viscosity of the respective SiO2 brine and brine-surfactant nanofluids in this study was used to determine those applications for which they would be most suited for.